Maybe I'll get into SW?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
1-2 bags of play sand from Home Depot (6 bucks), a good filter (x2 the Magnum HOT), some Instant Ocean (13 bucks) or equivalent salt mix and your good to go, IF your only looking to do fish. If your looking to do reef that's what it gets somewhat complex. I switched from fresh to salt (fish only) last month and it has not been too $ difficult (well minus the fish! LOL). I am not a big fan of running lights all day on my 75g, plus all the other gadgets you need, so I am avoiding reef for now. Not to say some day I might dabble in it. :D

So far I have really enjoyed it. And the wife loves the fish. She was not a big fan of large and in charge cichlids and cats....she prefers the pretty stuff....lol
 
dont even dream of using play sand! thats terrible advice. You will be fighting diatoms out the wahzoo! Go for a quality aragonite in the proper grain size to suit your needs.
 
I have never had any issues with play sand as a substrate. Although I will admit I wish Home Depot still sold aragonite play sand. They use too few years ago then the company went belly up I think.
 
you may not now but the main ingredient in play sand is silica and diatoms feed off of silica and silicates in your water. They continue to turn sand brown until all the silicates are used up. This will take a very long time when your entire sand bed is made of silica crystals. Food for thought.
 
Otherone said:
If your starting from scratch - it's gonna take 6-8 weeks just to cycle the 30 gal.If you go with all dryrock possibly even longer which means your overhead expenses thru this period will be next to nothing if you so choose. We started w/ a 30 gal - 20lbs dry/base rock 10lbs Liverock and barebottomed. The liverock started the cycle and seeded the tank with coraline. We had a marineland powerhead + whisper filter pump w/ no media to move the water and a heater. Because we didn't want unwanted algae we didn't use a light at all thru cycling. Also we only topped off the water in the tank so as to let the gases generate healthy BB. We changed 10% of the water prior to adding the 1st fish (yellow tail damsel) and started using the lights 8 hours daily and then relaxed - let it cycle thru again. Point being, Slow is Good. You can throw tons of money at your new salty and the results will still be the same, the time factor doesn't change by much. So rich or poor you still gotta wait.

After this you have a Saltwater eco-system, you can add-on at your own pace. To start you will need heater, hydrometer, salt mix, some type of pump to move the water, ro/di or dechlorinated tap water, and a saltwater basic test kit. As for number crunching - go to the pet store either online or imperson and add it up. After your cycled thru the maintence isn't that much, changing like 5 gal a week costs like 2-3 bucks in salt.
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So you had no filter media. Does the live rock do all the filter work then? I've read that is possible but very difficult, is that how your running yours?
Forgive me if its a dumb question but im just curious and dont know much about marine other than i tried it as a kid and killed everything because i had no idea what i was doing, but i would like to try it again at some point and love the info.
 
jworth said:
dont even dream of using play sand! thats terrible advice. You will be fighting diatoms out the wahzoo! Go for a quality aragonite in the proper grain size to suit your needs.
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i agree you will have trouble with crazy hair algae if you use play sand hit up your local pet smart they have 30 lbs bags of sugar sized sand which i use in all my saltwater tanks its perfect jsut needs a quick washing before adding and its only 20 bucks for a bag and u wont need all 30 lbs stick to around a 1in sand bed tho.
 
IMO, sw tanks arent cheap.. it cost about 20$/gallon for a FOWLR (fish only with live rock) setup and up to 50$/gallon for a reef setup. The major cost are the lights, skimmer, live rock (i highly recommend getting atleast 50% LV / 50%) my 20g reef setup cost me about $1000 so far and i dont even have any fishes/corals yet.

If you don't have alot of money at moment to spend on SW, I would recommend you to either :

A- Buy used setup (search alot before you do that to make sure you don't buy crap)
B- Wait until you can buy everything and still have funds in case of emergency.
C- Buy one thing at the time --> dont start before you have -> Skimmer (~$150), 2x powerheads (~$60), 30lbs of live rock (15lbs live rock + 15 lbs base rock could save you money) (~$150), heater (~$30), hydrometer (~15$ i think?).

***you should use that 10g tank as a sump to put the skimmer and the heater so its not in the display tank***

After that you can start filling the tank and you won't have to buy the lights until you decide to start adding fishes in your tank ( atleast 1-2months after you started cycling it) To start i would recommend T5HO or LED if you can afford it.

Anyway good luck with your SW tank, i hope you decide to continue that project but dont forget to take your time and have fun :D

PS: there are cheapers methods but you would probably have a hard time getting a nice and healthy looking SW tank.
 
I mean he is right, sw isn't cheap but there are thriving "ghetto setups" as well. It's really not as complicated as it seems. The live rock recommendation I think Is a little high. In a 29 I would get 30 -40 lbs of base and 5-10 lbs of live. The base rock is only like 2-3 dollars a pound which adds up quick but this is your actual filter so it's best not to skimp. You really only need a small piece of live rock to get your bacterial culture established. The ten pound recommendation is only my personal preference of watching animals crawl out Of them. It's really cool when you wake up one day and see hundreds of Copepoda buzzing around or a small brittle star in a crevice. Salt water aquaria are exPensive but the expense can be diluted by how frequent your maintenance schedules are.

This is just my experience but I have a 29 ran with a reef octopus bh-100 an aqueon hob converted to refugium and a couple of ocean stream powerhead with a wavemaker ( the wave maker came with the two power heads.) total costs to convert it from fresh: less than 400. The aqueon filter was laying around, I have river rOck substrate ( not ideal but I treat it like bare bottom and vacuum the mess out of it twice a week. My animals are happy and eating like pigs.
 
max412 said:
IMO, sw tanks arent cheap.. it cost about 20$/gallon for a FOWLR (fish only with live rock) setup and up to 50$/gallon for a reef setup. The major cost are the lights, skimmer, live rock (i highly recommend getting atleast 50% LV / 50%) my 20g reef setup cost me about $1000 so far and i dont even have any fishes/corals yet.

If you don't have alot of money at moment to spend on SW, I would recommend you to either :

A- Buy used setup (search alot before you do that to make sure you don't buy crap)
B- Wait until you can buy everything and still have funds in case of emergency.
C- Buy one thing at the time --> dont start before you have -> Skimmer (~$150), 2x powerheads (~$60), 30lbs of live rock (15lbs live rock + 15 lbs base rock could save you money) (~$150), heater (~$30), hydrometer (~15$ i think?).

***you should use that 10g tank as a sump to put the skimmer and the heater so its not in the display tank***

After that you can start filling the tank and you won't have to buy the lights until you decide to start adding fishes in your tank ( atleast 1-2months after you started cycling it) To start i would recommend T5HO or LED if you can afford it.

Anyway good luck with your SW tank, i hope you decide to continue that project but dont forget to take your time and have fun :D

PS: there are cheapers methods but you would probably have a hard time getting a nice and healthy looking SW tank.
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May I ask where you got your calculations for price per gallon on FOWLR and Reefs? Granted you can spend top dollar for the best of the best and what not. The OP is looking to have a SW setup with a certain budget. IMO you can have a good looking SW setup for a lot less money.. I think the biggest thing is doing the research and knowing what you’re doing.. You can have the best skimmer in the world and the most expensive lights and still kill a $10,000 tank if you don't know what you’re doing. On the other hand with a lot of knowledge in SW fish keeping and doing the research, you can have a beautiful display with lower budget equipment IMO. I'm not claiming to have a lot of knowledge in SW or being an expert by no means and I think my tank is pretty good looking and I haven’t spent top dollar on equipment. My tank has a lot of money invested in it but that's because I am currently living overseas and everything is twice the price and in euro’s as far as LR, corals, and fish go. Of course the better equipment you buy the better it will work and the easier the maintenance will be. You get what you pay for in most cases. I think if she plans on doing FOWLR there is no need for expensive lights. Also no need to buy the more expensive reef salt. As far as equipment goes most things can be found on craigslist or some other second hand source. That will save a ton of money. I always see LR for sale $1-2 on craigslist because people are getting out of the hobby or moving and just need to get rid of the stuff. If you shop around and go look at the rock and make sure it’s not covered in algae, aiptasia and other crap and it looks like that the person took good care of their tank you can save a ton of money that way. So IMO you can have a good looking tank and do it pretty cheap. Especially FOWLR. I’m sure other people with more knowledge will chime in, but I think it can be done on a budget and with good results as well.
 
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